The Musica Aeterna Chamber Choir, conductor and musical director: Ilya Plotkin, performs a Christmas program in Sergei's Courtyard, Jerusalem

Ilya Plotkin (courtesy Musica Aeterna)

“Gloria”, a Christmas concert performed by the Jerusalem Musica Aeterna Chamber Choir (conductor: Ilya Plotkin), took place in Sergei’s Courtyard, Jerusalem, on January 7th, 2020. Sergei’s Courtyard, part of the 17-acre Russian Compound, consists of a complex of verdant gardens and fish ponds surrounded by a square of two-story stone buildings with two Renaissance-styled towers. It was funded by an uncle of Tsar Nicholas II and built in 1890 by the Imperial Orthodox Society of Palestine to house pilgrims. The Israeli government purchased the compound’s land in the 1960s. In 2008, then prime minister Ehud Olmert decided to offer Sergei’s Courtyard as a “reconciliation gift” to Russia. The site has been carefully restored. The original dining room, a grand space replete with crystal chandeliers and muraled ceilings, was the venue for the Musica Aeterna concert. Maestro Plotkin conducted the ensemble of eighteen singers, with Nataly Rotenberg accompanying certain of the works on keyboard.

 

Following lively performances of Part 1 of Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and Bruckner’s lush a-cappella motet “Locus iste”, we heard A.Diabelli’s “Missa Pastorale” (1830). Then to a bracket of works of Russian composers, opening with Ukrainian-born Dmitry Bortniansky’s Choral Concerto No.6 “Glory to God in the Highest”, its sections rich in contrasts and punctuated by instrumental interludes. Bortniansky (1751–1825) spent ten years in Italy, on his return to Russia achieving great success as a composer and choral director, in 1796 becoming director of the Imperial Court Chapel. Following the first Israeli performance of a Christmas Concerto by Stepan Degtyarev (1766-1813), the choir’s singing of Rachmaninoff’s “Hail, O Virgin”, from the composer's All-Night Vigil “Vespers” was sensitively shaped and intimate in sound, re-creating the piece’s sense of awe and mystery. Returning to Latin sacred texts, a tender and expressive reading of Mozart’s “Ave Verum” gave way to William Byrd’s 1605 setting of the same text, its polyphonic phrasing, imaginative harmonic colours and profound empathy making it one of the gems of sacred English Renaissance music. In the "Domine Deus" and "Agnus Dei" from Vivaldi's "Gloria", alto Oksana Kaliberda’s solos threaded through the weave of the piece were finely shaped, tastefully ornamented and expressive. No Christmas concert would be complete without the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah”, here, sounding a little too strident for the strongly reverberant acoustic of the hall; the choir’s English pronunciation was a little under par.

 

A nice touch to the festive evening was the Christmas carol “Silent Night” sung most agreeably in both Russian and English, with choir member Leonid Akselrod’s lyrical guitar timbres added to Rotenberg’s accompaniment.  Altogether, Nataly Rotenberg’s skilful and attentive accompanying added much musical meaning and artistry to the evening. Musica Aeterna, a vocal a-cappella ensemble, specializing in music by Russian composers, was established by Maestro Ilya Plotkin in1996.